Manning Wins Round on WikiLeaks Helicopter Video

[midnight]

Earlier Thursday, the military judge ruled that Manning's lawyers can offer evidence contradicting the government's assertion that he revealed classified information in a leaked battlefield video from Iraq.

The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, took judicial notice of the document, a preliminary step toward admitting evidence.

The document is an assessment by a former U.S. Central Command official of video showing a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed at least eight people, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. His assessment was that the video should be unclassified.

That contradicted evidence offered by prosecutors. They have presented an assessment from a Pentagon official that the video revealed military tactics, techniques and procedures and should be classified.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/367-wikileaks/18144-manning-wins-round-on-wikileaks-helicopter-video

[xchrom]

1. du rec.

[MotherPetrie]

2. K&R

[struggle4progress]

3. I'm not sure of all details here, but I can't see how the government could win

a conviction for leaking classified info, on the basis of something that "should have been" classified; and similarly, I can't see how the defense could forestall a conviction for leaking classified info, on the basis of something that "should not have been" classified

It was either classified or it was not: if it was not, nobody can sanely argue Mr Manning deliberately released classified info, on the grounds it could have been classified later -- that seems an obvious violation of the ex post facto prohibition, because it would allow prosecution of anybody for any document release, by the simple trick of classifying the material after the release

On the other hand, I suppose it may be germane to the "communicating with the enemy" charge if the video arguably contained combat-operations info that could have been helpful to the enemy, since details of combat-operations might be regarded as deserving automatic protection, whether or not anyone had bothered to formally classify the details

And, honestly, I don't understand why the government picked this high-profile item as part of the complaint. It seems to me that a generation ago, reporters were able to cover such material routinely. All the "embedded reporter" crap we have seen since Vietnam, and all the "embedded reporter" crap we have seen since, is really counterproductive. Two Reuters reporters were killed in this strike, and the Reuters request for the tape should have been honored. And Manning seems not to have been the first to leak this tape: another media outlet reportedly had it prior to the Wikileaks release, but decided not to use it. I'd be happy to see Manning skate on the issue of the tape, or just get a wristslap for it. It's the indiscriminate 750K document dump that concerns me

[localroger]

5. It's military "justice"

"A court martial has the same relationship to a court as martial music has to music."

[reusrename]

7. I don't agree with your takeaway.

National security should not be used as a fig leaf for illegal or immoral acts.

If the tape should not have been classified in the first place, then Manning should not be held accountable for releasing it.

The military routinely classifies stuff that has been in the public domain for years. I remember that when Reagan invaded Grenada, one of the things they did was they classified all of the maps of the island. IIRC, several student were detained for a short time for having tourist maps in their possession. Luckily, those same tourist maps prevented a hospital or a school or something from being blown up.

[midnight]

8. K&R

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

4. K&R. nt

[OnyxCollie]

6. K&R. nt

[savalez]

9. Does anybody know

what happened, if anything, to the soldier that was heard on the radio exaggerating about the situation (IMO) in order to get the okay to shoot?